THE OLDEST CITY IN THE WORLD.

The Damascus Seen by Saul of Tarsus Still Exists, Presenting the Same Scenes and Cherishing the Same Customs That Characterized It 1,000 Years Ago.

If you were suddenly asked to name the oldest city in the world which is still in a flourishing condition, what would be your answer?

In nine cases out of ten, the person to whom such a query might be propounded would hark back to Egypt, Greece, or Rome. He would be wrong. The oldest city in the world is Damascus.

Tyre and Sidon have crumbled on the shore; Baalbec is a ruin; Palmyra is buried in a desert; Nineveh and Babylon have disappeared from the Tigris and the Euphrates. Damascus remains what it was before the days of Abraham—a center of trade and travel—an isle of verdure in the desert; "a presidential capital," with martial and sacred associations extending through thirty centuries.

It was near Damascus that Saul of Tarsus saw the light above the brightness of the sun; the street which is called Strait, in which it was said "he prayed," still runs through the city.

The city which Mohammed surveyed from a neighboring height and was afraid to enter "because it was given to man to have but one paradise, and for his part he was resolved not to have it in this world," is to-day what Julian called the "Eye of the East," as it was in the time of Isaiah "the head of Syria."

From Damascus came the damson, our blue plums, and the delicious apricot of Portugal called damasco; damask, our beautiful fabric of cotton and silk, with vines and flowers raised upon a smooth, bright ground; the damask rose introduced into England in the time of Henry VIII; the Damascus blade, so famous the world over for its keen edge and wonderful elasticity, the secret of whose manufacture was lost when Tamerlane carried the artist into Persia; and that beautiful art of inlaying wood and steel with gold and silver, a kind of mosaic engraving and sculpture united—called damaskeening—with which boxes, bureaus, and swords are ornamented.